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10 Must-Read Biographies of Indians Who Transformed The Nation

Here’s a list of 10 biographies of pioneering Indians -- from Dr Ambedkar and Satyajit Ray to APJ Abdul Kalam and Kapil Dev -- that will leave you inspired.

1. Dilip Kumar: The Definitive Biography by Bunny Reuban

2. Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye by Andrew Robinson

3. The Man Who Knew Infinity (Srinivasa Ramanujan) by Robert Kanigel

4. Sir C V Raman by Uma Parameswaran

5. Beyond the Last Blue Mountain (JRD Tata) by R M Lala

6. Gandhi Before India (M K Gandhi) by Ramachandra Guha

7. Waiting for a Visa – BR Ambedkar

8. Wings of Fire – An Autobiography by APJ Abdul Kalam and Arun Tiwari

9. Straight from the Heart: An Autobiography – Kapil Dev

10. The Race of My Life by Milkha Singh

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10 Best Biographies of Indian Personalities You Should Read

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Famous person biographies are always a source of inspiration. The biographies will inform you about the controversies and dark sides of a person you may not be familiar with. Some people write biographies to dispel myths about themselves, while others seek to provoke criticism. Here is a list of the best biographies of Indian personalities that you should definitely sit down and read.

Also read: 15 Best Biographies and Autobiography Books for your TBR List

1. The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of The Genius Ramanujan – Robert Kanigel

Source: Wikipedia

A Life of the Genius: The Man Who Knew Infinity –  Robert Kanigel wrote Ramanujan, a biography of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, in 1991. The book details his upbringing in India, as well as his mathematical accomplishments and collaboration with mathematician G. H. Hardy.

2. Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India – Joseph Lelyveld

In this biography of the many biographies of Mahatma Gandhi, Lelyveld has attempted to present a very unbiased and rooted Gandhi in flesh and bones. Gandhi appears in this biography more as a human and less as a God. It was interpreted as a way of presenting Gandhi in a “ perverse ” manner which in fact was a misinterpretation of an honest writeup.

3. Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan – Shrabani Basu

“Spy Princess,” tells the story of Noor’s life from birth to death, using information from her family, friends, witnesses, and official documents, including recently released personal files of SOE operatives. It’s the story of a young woman who lived with grace, beauty, courage, and determination, and who bravely gave up her life in the service of her ideals. “Liberte” was her final word.

4. The Polyester Prince: The Rise of Dhirubhai Ambani – Hamish McDonald

The Australian author wrote this biography of Dhirubhai Ambani, his struggles, and his journey towards success. Apparently, this book hurt the sentiments of the Ambani family and could never be published in India. It is still considered one of the most interesting biographies written about an Indian personality.

5. Beyond the Last Blue Mountain – R. M. Lala

An in-depth and unforgettable portrait of India’s most illustrious and revered industrialist. This superb biography, written with J.R.D. Tata’s cooperation, tells J.R.D.’s story from birth to 1993, the year he died in Switzerland. This biography is a must-read thus making its way on to our list of best biographies of Indian personalities.

6. Vivekananda: A Biography – Swami Nikhilananda

Swami Vivekananda’s (1863 – 1902) vast knowledge of Eastern and Western culture, deep spiritual insight, brilliant conversation, broad human sympathy, and colourful personality are presented in this engrossing biography. Swami Vivekananda, India’s first spiritual and cultural ambassador to the West, preached Vedanta’s universal message: the Godhead’s non-duality, the soul’s divinity, the oneness of existence, and religious harmony. Swami Vivekananda’s life is chronicled in this 256-page book, which includes 28 photographs and an appendix with Swami’s most important teachings.

7. Nani A. Palkhivala: A life – M V Kamath

Nanabhoy Palkhivala’s life is chronicled in this biography. He was a staunch supporter of civil liberties, a foresighted economist, and a renowned lawyer. M.V. Kamath depicts all facets of this charismatic personality in this detailed book. Interviews, letters, and archival material from a variety of reliable sources are used to compile this comprehensive book. Before writing this book, Kamath conducted extensive research into Nani’s life, as evidenced by the large amount of information intertwined with the biography. While the book provides details about specific events in Nani’s life, it also highlights Indian history that was relevant to those events, providing context.

8.   Karmayogi: A Biography of E. Sreedharan – M.S. Ashokan

Source: Wikibio

Sreedharan’s years with the Railways, the construction of the Kolkata Metro and the Konkan Railway, followed by the Delhi Metro, and the many metro projects he is currently involved with are all chronicled in this fascinating book. This is the uplifting story of a very private person who has become an icon of modern India because of his uncompromising work ethic, adapted from a bestselling Malayalam biography.

9. Indra Nooyi – A Biography –  Annapoorna

The life of Indra Nooyi is chronicled in Indra Nooyi: A Biography. Her life is chronicled in the book, from her early years in Chennai to her struggles to make a name for herself in the corporate world. It chronicles her journey from the time she moved to the United States, married, and rose steadily to her current position as CEO of the world’s second-largest food and beverage company. Rajpal published Indra Nooyi: A Biography as a paperback in 2013.

10.  Kalpana Chawla: A Life –  Anil Padmanabhan

Kalpana Chawla, who was born into a conservative family in a Haryana provincial town, aspired to be a star. She became the first PBI – Indian woman to travel to space, and even more remarkably, to travel twice, through sheer hard work, indomitable intelligence, and immense faith in herself. Journalist Anil Padmanabhan interviews people who knew her family and friends at Karnal, as well as NASA colleagues, to create a moving portrait of a woman whose life was a shining affirmation that if you have a dream, you can achieve it no matter how difficult it is.

These were some of the best biographies of Indian personalities that one should read in order to gain a better understanding of famous people, history, and various unjust social practises.

I am a writer and an athlete. I spend my mornings drinking a hot cup of coffee and working out. Being a perfectionist, I also indulge in immense self-criticism.

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• 10 Must Read Biographies On...

10 Must-Read Biographies On Inspirational People From India

Biographies always end up becoming a source of inspiration and many authors have compiled accounts on impactful Indians whose lives are worth sharing. We’ve shortlisted the 10 best biographies you should read.

Outlaw: india’s bandit queen and me by roy moxham.

Roy Moxham’s biography of spine-chilling events that occurred in Phoolan Mallah’s life was a result of his journey and friendship with her in the later years of her life. Known as ‘bandit queen’ in India, Phoolan hailed from a poor rural family in Uttar Pradesh. She was gang-raped and abused many times before she became a gang leader and then a Member of the Parliament in India. Roy’s biography is a gripping story of the incredible woman who was gunned down in 2001.

Akhada: The Authorized Biography of Mahavir Singh Phogat by Saurabh Duggal

Saurabh Duggal tells the story of Mahavir Singh Phogat in his biography. The amateur wrestler rebelled against the appalling practice of female foeticide in Harayana and trained his own daughters in the sport. His eldest daughter, Geeta Phogat, became the first ever freestyle wrestler to win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and the first female wrestler from India to qualify for the Olympics.

Sir C V Raman by A. Krishna Bhatt

This biography by A. Krishna Bhatt gives an intimate account of Nobel Prize winner C. V. Raman’s life . Bhatt’s research reveals how Raman was a jovial person, always curious and a great teacher. The book makes C. V. Raman more human, going beyond the image of a worshipped physicist. Raman’s humble beginnings and great achievements are a source of inspiration.

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of The Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel

Robert Kanigel paints a picture of Srinivasa Ramanujan’s life since childhood in Tamil Nadu, India. His family couldn’t send him to school after a point but that didn’t stop Ramanujan from studying pure mathematics and working under the British mathematician G. H. Hardy. In his biography , Robert delves into Ramanujan’s struggle to be taken seriously and eventually being recognised for his contributions in mathematics.

Beyond the Last Blue Mountain by R. M. Lala

Beyond The Last Blue Mountain is one of the best biographies written about an Indian. The book is divided into four parts, taking the readers through the details of Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata’s childhood and milestones. J.R.D Tata’s interest in aviation that led to the beginning of the aviation industry in India and his contributions as an industrialist, are discussed comprehensively. The last part of the book talks about his friendships, personal life and how he kept it away from the public eye.

Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu

Shrabani Basu’s detailed chronicle of Noor Inayat Khan makes the biography a riveting read. Noor was an Indian-origin Briton from an affluent family. As a shy, sensitive girl, she chose the most unlikely work for herself, in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during the Second World War. She lived a life of danger and adventure before being killed in a concentration camp in Dachau. Basu’s book is heartwarming and inspirational.

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Husain: Portrait of an Artist by Ila Pal

The late Maqbool Fida Husain, better known as M.F. Husain , was a peculiar but charming figure of the 20th-century. No one knows much about the man, except that he was an internationally acclaimed modern painter who always walked barefoot with a paintbrush in his hand. The image almost became his brand statement. Ila Pal goes deep into M.F. Husain’s life and reveals his wit and thought process. Ila met the painter in 1961 and made him her case study for 50 years and the biography is a beautiful culmination of that association.

Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha

Gandhi Before India is a deviation from what is usually written about M.K. Gandhi who is revered as ‘father of the nation’ for his mammoth contributions to India’s independence movement. Ramachandra Guha’s detailed research spans across four continents. He writes about Gandhi’s formative years in South Africa and personal details of his life as a father and husband. Ramachandra’s beautifully written biography paints Gandhi in a different light and tells us why M. K. Gandhi was an inspirational figure.

Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb by Jerry Pinto

Jerry Pinto is probably one of the best Indian authors of the 21st-century and his biography on Helen tells everything we ever wanted to know about the French-Burmese actress. An icon in Bollywood , Helen came to the country as a refugee from Burma. To support her widowed mother and two brothers she worked as a chorus dancer in Hindi films. At her career’s peak she was called the ‘H-Bomb’.

Lilavati’s Daughters by Indian Academy of Sciences

The collection of biographical essays on women scientists of the 19th and 20th-century is nothing but inspirational. The book tells us about botanist E. K. Janaki Ammal, chemist Asmita Chatterjee, physician Anandibai Joshi, anthropologist Iravati Karve, biochemist Kamala Sohonie, medical researcher Kamal Ranadive and a few others who pioneered women’s education in India at a time when women were hardly allowed to finish high school.

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22 Famous Indian Authors (And Their Best Books)

I realized India has a rich literary tradition  and is home to some of the best and most imaginative authors out there. More  people should read  these books. The sun goes down in a different way in India. And you can feel the same warm, exotic glow by sitting back and opening a book through which monsoons and smells of spices will flow. Of course, I haven’t read all the authors from this list (I intend to). But this is to serve as a reference for anyone interested in  Indian literature  who wants to go deeper and learn about its most distinguished literati, both classic and contemporary.

22 Famous Indian Authors And Their Notable Works:

1. rabindranath tagore.

This was the first Indian author I’ve ever read. I remember sitting on a bus going to my office in Chandigarh and reading Gitanjali and Stray Birds in an old paperback version. These poems changed my life and opened me up to something I’ve never experienced before. Tagore was born in 1861 and during his life, he wrote hundreds of poems, books, and articles. His father knew Persian and could recite the poetry of Hafiz by heart. You can see that many of these Sufi mysteries are also detectable in the great author’s work. It is always related to The Power of Love and the closeness to God. Later in life, Tagore visited the tombs of Saadi and Hafiz in Shiraz and admired these poets greatly. He was also deeply influenced by Baul mysticism, Sahaja Buddhism, Vedanta Philosophy, and the Upanishads. He was knighted by the British Empire in 1915, but within a couple of years, he resigned the title as a protest against British policies in India (especially the massacre in Amritsar in 1919, which grounds I walked during my stay in Punjab). Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913).

Notable works:

Quote from the author:.

“The small wisdom is like water in a glass: clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like the water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable.”

2. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti was a great Indian writer and philosopher  who later in life moved  to the USA. You can still find many recordings of his talks and lectures on YouTube (highly recommended). His interests were wide-ranging and included psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, societal change, and human relationships. I’ve learned a lot about meditation and the nature of consciousness from him. This includes the principle of non-grasping and non-judgment which serve me well to this day. He was one of the first people to bring Eastern thought to the West. His thesis was that a revolution in society can only be brought about at the level of an individual. By changing ourselves for the better we can change society as a whole. He pledged no allegiance to a nationality, caste, or religion and spent the later years of his life traveling around the world and giving lectures to large and small groups.

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and  write poems , and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.”

3. Chetan Bhagat

“Pretty girls behave best when you ignore them. Of course, they have to know you are ignoring them, for otherwise, they may not even know you exist.”

4. Aravind Adiga

5. shashi tharoor, 6. amrita pritam.

Pritam, born in 1919 was a novelist, essayist, and poet who, unlike many of the authors on this list wrote in Punjabi and Hindi. She is known as the most prominent Punjabi poet who is loved both by Indians and Pakistanis. She lived a long life during which she produced over 100 books of poetry , fiction, and biographies, as well as a collection of beautiful Punjabi folk songs. Her works have been translated into many Indian and foreign languages. Her book Pinjar (The Skeleton) was groundbreaking and ultimately got adapted into an award-winning movie in 2003. She has been often compared to Mohan Singh and Shiv Kumar Batlavi and was the most prominent voice for the liberation of women in Punjabi literature.

“Warish Shah I call out to you, Rise from your grave, speak out and turn, Another page of the Book of Love”

7. Kamala Markandaya

“For where shall a man turn who has no money? Where can he go? Wide, wide world, but as narrow as the coins in your hand. Like a tethered goat, so far and no farther. Only money can make the rope stretch, only money.”

8. Khushwant Singh

9. r.k. narayan.

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami is mostly known for his fiction works related to the South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading English language author in India along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. It might come as a surprise, but he was a close friend of Graham Greene, who helped him to get publishers for his first books . The  fictional town Malgudi was first introduced in his book  “Swami and Friends”. The made-up town had a pristine historical record dating back to the times of Ramayana and Buddha. He loved to show the humor of everyday life and has been often compared to William Faulkner. He wrote for over sixty years and lived to be 94.

10. Salman Rushdie

This author should not require an introduction. Rushdie first came on the map with his novel “Midnight’s Children” (1981) for which he won the Booker Prize. His works are a great combination of magical realism and historical fiction and are often set on the Indian subcontinent. His novel “The Satanic Verses”, put him in mortal danger from assassins who haunted him for many years on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa, condemning the author to death, for his “blasphemous” novel which ostensibly offended the Prophet. He wrote many novels afterward and has been ranked 13th on the list of the best British writers since 1945.

11. Arundhati Roy

“To love. To be loved. Never forget your insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty in its lair. Never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”

12. Vikram Seth

Born in 1952 in Calcutta, Seth is a part novelist, and part travel writer known mostly for his first novel “The Golden Gate” and the epic novel “A Suitable Boy”. The author was raised in London and graduated from Oxford, and Stanford where he studied economics. It took him a long time to get the attention of the public and some of his first volumes did not attract critical attention. The first book that conquered the hearts of readers was a humorous travelogue “From Heaven Lake.” His books are most often written in verse but his book of prose “A Suitable Boy”, which has 1349 pages, is often compared to the works of Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens.

“But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they’re bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they’re good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.”

13. Anita Desai

“Isn’t it strange how life won’t flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?”

14. Jhumpa Lahiri

Although she was born in London, and now has American citizenship, her background is ethnically Indian (her parents come from West Bengal). Her work often explores the Indian immigrant experience in America. Her book “Interpreter of Maladies” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the PEN/Hemingway award. Moreover, her second novel “The Namesake” was made into a popular movie of the same name. In 2011 she moved to Rome and since then she has translated a few Italian books into English. Her forthcoming book is going to be written in Italian as well.

15. Amitav Ghosh

Ghosh is mostly known for his English works of fiction. He’s also the winner of the prestigious Jnanpith Award for his outstanding contribution to literature. He was born in Calcutta in 1956 but later moved with his family to New York, USA, where he joined The Queen’s College as a distinguished professor of comparative literature. He’s also been a visiting professor in the English department at Harvard University He later returned to India where he began working on his Ibis Trilogy. He wrote eight novels (the most famous one being the “Sea of Poppies”), as well as 6 works of nonfiction including many notable collections of essays. In his works, he often deals with epic themes of history, memory of political struggle, and communal violence which include elements of anthropology as well as art.

“What would it be like if I had something to defend – a home, a country, a family – and I found myself attacked by these ghostly men, these trusting boys? How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger, but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and conscience?”

16. Ruskin Bond

17. kiran desai.

Kiran is the daughter of Anita Desai, already mentioned in this list. Her novel “Inheritance of Loss” which took her seven years to complete won the Man Booker Award in 2006. She received many other accolades (including praise from Salman Rushdie) for her works and has been named as one of the 20 most influential Indian women. She was born in Delhi but later on, she moved to India and then to the United States where she studied creative writing  at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia University. Despite publishing just two books, she’s still one of the most  widely-known English language writers from India

“Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.”

18. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra is an author and poet who was born in Kolkata but now holds American citizenship as well. She received many awards and many of her books are currently turned into movies and TV shows. Her works are set both in India and the United States and often depict the life of immigrants. What’s quite distinctive about her work is that she writes in many genres and for many audiences including adults and children. She penned a dozen books of fiction, a couple of books for young adults and children, and many books of poetry.

19. Nirad C. Chaudhuri

Chaudhuri lived to be 101 years old, and he almost lived in three different centuries. He was born in 1897 still in British India and died in 1999 in Oxford, England. He wrote both in English and Bengali. His books often touch upon the themes of the history and cultural changes in India, especially in the context of the British Empire. His magnum opus “The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian” attracted many admirers over the years, including Winston Churchill. It’s an autobiography of Chaudhuri from his birth to the age of 50. The book brought about much controversy and was a great account of how colonial rule worked.

20. Mahatma Gandhi

This man doesn’t need any introduction. He played a huge role in a political movement that ultimately led to the liberation of India from the British Empire. Most people know him for his political activism and service to his country. But he was also an avid writer who left behind many interesting books that chronicled his fight for independence and his philosophy. His book “The Story of my experiments with Truth” is a collection of 105 essays covering different aspects of his life and the development of his philosophy. Another book called “Hind Swaraj” was written in 1909 but already sketched out a dream of a free India.

Notable Works:

21. dilip hiro.

“When asked about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s 1942 movement, Attlee’s lips widened in the smile of disdain and he uttered, slowly, “Minimal.”

22. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

Chatterji could be as well in the first place on this list as he is the most popular, and the most translated Indian author of all time. He was born in Bengal at the end of the 19th century and remains the most widely known novelist in the Bengali language. His works mostly deal with the day, often tragic life of the villagers of his native land. He received little formal schooling but was endowed with a love of literature from his father. He later improved his writing skills  under the tutelage of Kishorimohan Mukherjee. From then on, he was involved in the fight for independence and established himself as one of India’s most famous writers.

“They’ll have the sweet, intimate memories of a lost paradise, and beside it a sea of sorrow… People looking on from the outside think all is lost… What remains when everything is lost can be held in the palm, like a jewel. It can’t be flaunted in a pageant, so the lookers-on are disappointed and jeer as they return home..”

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16 Autobiography Books By Famous Indian Personality That Should Definitely Be On Your Bookshelf

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• Drama Books
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• Hindi Novels
• Historical Fiction Books
• Horror Books
• Humour Books
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Biography & Memoir

• Business and Economics
• History Books
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Are you looking for some good Indian Biographies to read? bookGeeks has one of the largest collection of reviews of Indian Biographies & Memoirs written by many different personalities from various fields like cinema, sports, politics, humanities, scientists and other celebrities. A biography, or simply bio, or a memoir, is a detailed description of a person’s life.

All our reviews are professionally done and the methodology we follow is logical but simple. We divide the reviews of memoirs into 4 categories:

1. Candidness: Has the author written on all aspects of his/her life – good/bad? 2. Content: Is the content relevant to the present generation of readers? 3. The Writing Style: The readability and language flow. 4. The Entertainment Quotient: Overall enjoyability of the book.

Hold On to Your Dreams | Ruskin Bond | Book Review

Hold On to Your Dreams, at about 100 pages, is a treat to hold in your hands. It is like a long letter, a letter that consists of many things – from friendly guidance to glimpses of the author’s own past, from a sneak peek into his everyday activities to the memories of his books and writings, those he read, and those he wrote.

Journey Down the Years | Ruskin Bond | Book Review

“Journey Down the Years” by Ruskin Bond comprises of 25 pieces of writings, spanning an eclectic range of subjects. Through his pen Bond captures the essence of nature, nostalgia, memories, experiences, and simple living. The book offers a glimpse into the life of the author himself.

सुनो माँ! (Suno Maa) | संदीप भूतोड़िया (Sundeep Bhutoria) | पुस्तक समीक्षा

सुनो माँ! (Suno Maa) स्वयं में अद्भुत है, अनूठी है क्योंकि यह विश्व की विविध क्षेत्रों की महान विभूतियों – दलाई लामा, श्री एम योगी, डेविड शिलिंग, किरण मजूमदार शॉ, मिल्खा सिंह, रघु राय ,मौरीन लिपमैन, स्टीफ़न वेस्टबी, माइकल हॉकनी, चेरी ब्लेयर, डॉ कर्ण सिंह, शर्मिला टैगोर, सर क्लिफ रिचर्ड आदि द्वारा अपनी मां को लिखे गए पत्रों का संकलन है। सच जानिए यह केवल पत्र ही नहीं है वरन बहुमूल्य दस्तावेज़ भी हैं जो तत्कालीन परिस्थितियों का इतिहास हमारे समक्ष प्रस्तुत करते हैं।

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10 best inspirational biographies you must read.

Inspirational biographies can help people identify their passions and determine what to do to pursue them, even in difficult times. To help you find the best inspirational biographies, read this article.

Best Inspirational Biographies to Read

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The diary of a young girl by anne frank.

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Gandhi before india by ramachandra guha.

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Husain- Portrait of an Artist by Ila Pal

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Faqs: best inspirational biographies, q1. which is the best inspirational biography to read, q2. which is the best autobiography to read, q3. what is inspirational biography, related products.

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Nonfiction Books » History Books » Historical Figures

The best books on gandhi, recommended by ramachandra guha.

Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 by Ramachandra Guha

Gandhi's peaceful resistance to British rule changed India and inspired freedom movements around the globe. But as well as being an inspiring leader, Gandhi was also a human being. Ramachandra Guha , author of a new two-part biography of Gandhi, introduces us to books that give a fuller picture of the man who came to be known as 'Mahatma' Gandhi.

Interview by Sophie Roell , Editor

My Days With Gandhi by Nirmal Kumar Bose

A Week with Gandhi by Louis Fischer

Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action by Dennis Dalton

Gandhi's Religion: A Homespun Shawl by J. T. F. Jordens

Harilal Gandhi: A Life by Chandulal Bhagubhai

1 My Days With Gandhi by Nirmal Kumar Bose

2 a week with gandhi by louis fischer, 3 mahatma gandhi: nonviolent power in action by dennis dalton, 4 gandhi's religion: a homespun shawl by j. t. f. jordens, 5 harilal gandhi: a life by chandulal bhagubhai.

W e’re talking about books to read about Gandhi, but it’s hard to do that without mentioning your own biography. There’s the volume that covers Gandhi’s years in South Africa, Gandhi Before India , and then there’s another 900+ page volume, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World , covering the period from 1914 until his death in 1948. Especially for younger people who might not be as familiar with Gandhi, can you tell us why he’s so important and why we need to know about him?

But he was much more than merely a political leader. He was also a moral philosopher who gave the world a particular technique for combating injustice, namely nonviolent protest. He called this technique ‘satyagraha’, or ‘truth force’, and it has been followed and adopted in many countries across the world since his death, including in the United States.

Gandhi was also a very interesting thinker on matters of religion. He lived, and indeed died, for harmony between India’s two major religious communities, Hindus and Muslims. At a time when the world is riven with discord and disharmony between faith communities, I think Gandhi is relevant.

He lived a long life, almost 80 years, during which time he studied and worked in three countries, three continents—in the United Kingdom and South Africa as well as India. He wrote a great deal: his collected works run to 90 volumes. His autobiography was translated into more than 40 languages. An early political text he wrote, called Hind Swaraj, is still taught in universities around the world. So he was a thinker and writer as well as being an activist, which is not that common.

And he was also controversial. There were people who debated with him in India and outside it. There were people who took issue with his political views, his views on religion, his views on social reform.

He was a person who touched many aspects of social and political life in the 20th century. The issues he was grappling with are still alive with us today, not just in India, but across the world. That’s why he is so interesting and important. I wanted to write about him all my life.

I thought that was funny in your book: you write that you have been stalked by his shadow your whole life. Even when you were writing a social history of cricket, he came up—even though Gandhi hated cricket.

I’d say it was more that he was magisterially indifferent to cricket, which is in some ways worse than hating something. He was profoundly indifferent to films, cricket, even music. He was not someone who had a keenly developed aesthetic side.

As I say in the book, whatever I wrote about, he was there—somewhere in the background and sometimes in the foreground. Finally, I thought, ‘Let me settle my accounts with him.’ I was also fortunate that a very large tranche of archival papers connected with his life had recently opened up, which perhaps allowed me to give more nuance and detail than previous scholars had done.

I first heard about Gandhi when I was quite young and the film about him, directed by Richard Attenborough , came out. If you don’t know anything about Gandhi, is that a good place to start, in your view? 

I approve in a qualified sense. It’s a well-told story. Some of the acting is very good. Ben Kingsley in the title role, in particular, is absolutely stunning. It gives the contours of Gandhi’s political life and his struggle against the British quite accurately. It also talks about his family life and his problems with his wife.

But of course it’s a feature film, so it has to iron out all the complexities. For example, one of Gandhi’s greatest and most long-standing antagonists was a remarkable leader called B R Ambedkar, who came from an Untouchable background. He’s completely missing in the film, because if you bring him in, the story is too complicated to be told in a cute, Hollywood-y, good guy/bad guy kind of way.

“Attenborough’s Gandhi a good place to start because it’s a well-told story, the acting is good, and the cinematography is splendid—but it’s a very neat line”

Instead, the film brings in the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, as the stock villain, almost inevitably, because Jinnah divided India into two countries and based his politics on religion. It was narrow and divisive, and Gandhi, who thought Hindus and Muslims could live together, opposed it. So it’s understandable why Jinnah features, but Ambedkar was equally important in Gandhi’s life. The man with whom he battled as long and as spiritedly is missing.

So yes, Attenborough’s Gandhi a good place to start because it’s a well-told story, the acting is good, and the cinematography is splendid—but it’s a very neat line. The nuances, the shades and the ambiguities are missing.

Your biography of Gandhi obviously gives a much more comprehensive picture of him, but it’s also trying to give a balanced picture, I got the sense. You’re an admirer of Gandhi, but you’re also trying very hard to give the other side, is that right?

Very much so, because the job of a scholar, and a biographer in particular, is to suppress nothing. Whatever you find that is of interest or importance must be included, even if it makes you uncomfortable or makes your story less compelling or newsworthy.

Of course, I do largely admire Gandhi—I wouldn’t want to spend so many years of my life working on someone I was ambivalent about—but I can see that in his debates with the aforementioned Ambedkar he was not always right. He could be patronizing towards this younger, radical opponent of his.

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I can also see the ways in which he manipulated control over the Congress Party. He was a consummate politician, and did not want his main political vehicle to slip out of his grasp. He was a political manager, in that sense. He was also not a very good husband and an absolutely disastrous father. There’s a lot of moving correspondence between him and his first son, with whom he had a particularly problematic relationship. All my sympathies are with the son, and I think all the readers’ sympathies will be too.

When it came to his personal life, his political life, and his ideological views, there were times when I was profoundly out of sympathy with Gandhi and profoundly in sympathy with those who argued with him. All this also had to be part of the story.

Let’s go through the five books you’ve chosen. They’re not ranked in any particular order, but let’s start with the first one on your list, which is My Days with Gandhi, by his secretary and companion Nirmal Kumar Bose. This book deals with the last phase of his life. Could you tell me about it, and explain why it’s on your list of important books to read about Gandhi?

I put this book by Nirmal Kumar Bose on my list because I wanted a firsthand account of Gandhi. Bose was a considerable scholar. He wrote books, edited a scholarly journal and taught at universities. Although he’s not that well-known outside India, he was among the country’s most influential anthropologists, writing on caste and India’s tribal regions.

He was interested in Gandhi too. He joined the freedom movement in the 1930s, went to jail, and prepared an anthology of Gandhi’s writings. Then, in the winter of 1946–7, Gandhi was in the field in Bengal trying to bring about peace. This was a time when religious rioting was particularly savage in eastern Bengal and Gandhi needed an interpreter. Bose was a Bengali speaker and Gandhi knew of him and his writings. So Bose went with him.

This was a time which, at one level, saw Gandhi at his most heroic. Here is a 77-year-old man walking through the villages of eastern Bengal. Communication is awful; there’s malaria and dysentery and all kinds of other problems. He’s trying to bring Hindus and Muslims together, undertaking these heroic experiments to promote peace.

At the same time, he’s also experimenting with himself, because he’s obsessed with his own celibacy. He wants to test that his mind is absolutely pure by sleeping naked with a disciple of his, a young woman who also happened to be distantly related to him. And he was doing this in the open, because he never did anything behind curtains.

As an anthropologist and as a biographer, Nirmal Kumar Bose saw this as interesting, but as a disciple, he was deeply upset by it and he left Gandhi. He wrote some letters, which Gandhi replied to.

So there is this whole arc of Nirmal Kumar Bose’s connection with Gandhi. He’s with him during this period in Gandhi’s life where he is putting his life on the line, but also indulging in rather bizarre, peculiar and inexplicable experiments on himself. You can see this complicates the story far more than Attenborough’s film does.

Bose is puzzled and disappointed by Gandhi’s experiment but, in the end, still remains an admirer. I think the book is useful in that it provides a firsthand account of Gandhi by someone who is a scholar and a writer. Bose is not just a starry-eyed naïve disciple, but someone who is himself a thinker and has an analytical mind. He wants to probe deeply into his subject’s moods and anxieties.

It’s also a picture of Gandhi at a point in his life when he’s a bit isolated and disillusioned because the country is going in the direction of Partition, isn’t it?

Yes, that’s also very important. Gandhi struggled his whole life to keep a united India. From his time in South Africa onwards, he promoted Hindu-Muslim harmony. He was a Hindu himself, a deep believer and also deeply immersed in Hindu traditions. But in South Africa, his closest associates were Muslims.

In India, he tried to bring about a compact between these two large and sometimes disputatious communities. Ultimately, he failed—because Partition happened and Hindus and Muslims turned on each other. It was an effort of will, at his age, to compose himself, get himself back on track and then undertake this foot march through eastern Bengal.

All the trauma of his life, and particularly this sense of failure he has, is not unconnected to the experiment in celibacy. Gandhi thought that because he was not absolutely pure in his own mind, and had not completely tamed his own sexual urges, he was in some ways responsible for the fact that society was turning on itself. It was an article of faith, maybe even an egoistic delusion that Gandhi had, that social peace depended on his inner purity.

Let’s turn to the next book you’ve chosen, which is A Week with Gandhi by Louis Fischer. He was an American journalist who visited Gandhi at his ashram in 1942. Tell me more.

Louis Fischer wrote more than one book on Gandhi. He also wrote a biography of Gandhi called The Life of Mahatma Gandhi , which was published after Gandhi’s death. That book was the basis for Attenborough’s film. I didn’t want that book; I wanted something else by Fischer. This book is set in 1942, again, a time of great political turmoil and anxiety. The Second World War was on.

Let’s go back to give some context. In 1937 the national movement had been going on for a long time and several significant concessions were granted by the British. There was a partial devolution of powers to Indians and there were Congress governments in seven out of nine provinces. If the Second World War hadn’t happened, India would probably have become independent in the same way Canada or New Zealand or South Africa did. India would have slowly shed British rule and may have still owed some kind of symbolic allegiance to the Crown, in the way Australia or Canada do.

The war queered the pitch completely, however, because the British had their backs to the wall. This is a time—1939, 1940, 1941—when the Americans hadn’t yet entered the war, and the British were fighting alone. Even the Soviets didn’t enter until 1941. At that point, the British couldn’t care at all about Indian independence; all they wanted was to save their own skin and defeat Hitler.

Gandhi and the Congress were confronted with a terrible dilemma. On the one hand, for all his political differences with Imperial rule, Gandhi had enormous personal sympathy with the British people. He had many British friends; he had studied in London, and he loved London to distraction. When the Luftwaffe bombed London, he actually wept at the thought of Westminster Abbey coming under German bombs.

Gandhi was willing to abandon his doctrinal commitment to non-violence and to tell the British ‘Hitler is evil, he must be defeated, we will help you defeat him.’ ‘We’ here means the Congress party, India’s main political vehicle, led by Gandhi and Nehru. They said to the British, ‘We will work with you, but you must assure us that you will grant us independence once the war is over.’ This was, in my view, a very reasonable condition—because if the British were fighting for freedom, then surely that meant freedom for Indians, too?

This was rejected by the then prime minister, Winston Churchill, who was a diehard imperialist—and whose viceroy in India, Linlithgow, was as reactionary as Churchill was.

So here is Gandhi in India wondering, ‘What do I do? I want to help the British, but I want my people to be free.’ The Americans are sympathetic to his predicament. Fischer goes to India in 1942, at a time when Gandhi is telling the British, ‘If you don’t assure us freedom, I will launch another countrywide protest movement against your rule.’ This was to become the Quit India Movement of August 1942; Fischer visits just before that.

He goes to Gandhi’s ashram in central India. Unlike Nirmal Kumar Bose, Fischer is a journalist and a keen observer. He deals less in analysis and more in description. So there’s a very rich and informative account of the ashram, of Gandhi’s rural settlement, what the daily life was like, what the food was like. The food was awful. After a week of eating squash and boiled vegetables Fischer was waiting to go back to Bombay and have a good meal at the Taj Mahal Hotel.

Fischer describes Gandhi’s entourage, the men and women around him, his wife, his disciples and then he talks to Gandhi. It’s an unusually frank and open conversation. As Fischer says later on in the book, one of the joys of talking to Gandhi is that it’s not pre-scripted. When you talk to other politicians, he says, it’s like turning on a phonogram. You hears these stock metaphors, and a certain kind of rhetoric: it’s a practised, programmed and rehearsed speech. But when you talk to Gandhi, it’s a conversation. You’re opening up new lines of thought, and Gandhi himself is so open and transparent and reacting so spontaneously that he sometimes says things that he’s surprised at himself.

The book conveys the essential humanity of Gandhi and his down-to-earth character. He lived in this simple village community, with bad food and no modern conveniences at all.

I really like this book because it’s Gandhi from close up. I wanted Bose and Fischer on my list: one an Indian, the other American, one a scholar, the other a journalist, meeting Gandhi at different points in his life: 1942 for Fischer, 1946/47 for Bose. Both were critical periods in the life of Gandhi and in the history of the world. I wanted to juxtapose an Indian firsthand account of Gandhi’s life with a non-Indian, first-hand account of Gandhi’s life.

The other three books I’ve chosen are not first-hand accounts. They are more based on documentation and scholarship.

One last thing about Fischer which may be of interest to your readers with a more general interest in the history of 20th century politics: Fischer began as a Communist. He spent many years in Russia and married a Russian woman. He spoke fluent Russian, and like several American journalists of his time was rather credulous about the Russian Revolution. But then Stalin’s brutality opened his eyes and he came to Gandhi on the rebound, as it were.

Fischer was one of the contributors to the volume called The God That Failed , along with Arthur Koestler and other writers who were disenchanted by Communism.

So Fischer is a person with wide international experience. He’s lived in Russia, he’s travelled through Europe and then he discovers Gandhi in India. So from that point of view, I think his book is particularly useful.

One thing that comes up in this book quite a bit is Gandhi’s emphasis on spinning. He’s always trying to get people to do more spinning. Could you explain what that’s all about?

There are three major aspects to this. One is that spinning is a way of breaking down the boundaries between mental labour and manual labour and dissolving caste distinctions. In the Indian caste system, the upper caste Brahmins read books and are temple priests, and the Kshatriyas own land and give orders and fight wars. Then you have the Vaishyas, who are businessmen. It’s only the Shudras and the Untouchables, the fourth and fifth strata, who do manual labour. Manual labour is despised in the Indian caste system, and Gandhi wanted to say that everyone should work with their hands.

The second aspect is that Gandhi believed in economic self-reliance. A major factor in India’s underdevelopment was that its indigenous industries had been destroyed under British colonial rule. We were importing cloth from England, particularly Manchester. So this was a way of saying, ‘We will spin our own cloth and we’ll do it ourselves using decentralized methods. Each of us will spin something.’

The third aspect of it is that he is cultivating a spirit of solidarity among his fellow freedom fighters, and spinning is a way of doing that constructively and non-violently. How do fascists inculcate solidarity among the community? By marching up and down to show their enemies how menacing they can be. Consider spinning the Gandhian alternative to a fascist marchpast.

This is how you should read Gandhi’s interest in—you could even say obsession with—spinning. It was at once a program of social equality, of breaking down caste distinctions, of economic self-renewal and of nationalist unity: everyone will do the same thing.

But as a program for economic renewal—I mean, you’ve also written a very highly regarded book about India after Gandhi—don’t you think that Gandhi was sending the country in the wrong direction economically?

Well, it was rejected by his own closest disciple and anointed heir, Jawaharlal Nehru. When India became independent, Nehru launched the country firmly on the path to economic modernization, which included industrialization.

But it wasn’t wholly rejected because of another of Gandhi’s followers (who has a cameo role in my book), a remarkable woman called Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. She was the one who persuaded Gandhi that women must join the Salt March too. And after Gandhi died, while Nehru took the state in the direction of planned economic industrial development, Kamaladevi helped revive India’s craft traditions. Some of our textile and handwoven crafts are owed to Gandhi’s emphasis on spinning and to Kamaladevi, his preeminent female disciple. She really was a quite remarkable person who deserves a good biography of her own.

Let’s go on to the third book on your list, which is by Dennis Dalton.

Dennis Dalton is a retired American professor who is now in his eighties. I’ve never met him, but I have admired his work for a very, very long time. He did a PhD in England in the 1960s and later on taught at Columbia. In the 1970s and 1980s he wrote a series of pioneering articles on Gandhi, which greatly impressed me when I read them. Those articles then became the basis of this book, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action,  the third of the five that I’ve recommended.

I want to say a little bit about the hallmarks of Dalton’s work and why it’s particularly important. The first thing is that it is absolutely grounded in primary research. Unlike other Gandhi scholars, Dalton does not restrict himself to the collected works. There are 90 volumes of Gandhi’s own writings and it’s very easy to write a book—or indeed many books—just based on analyzing and re-analyzing what Gandhi said himself. Dalton, while he knows Gandhi’s collected writings very well, also looks at contemporary newspapers and what they were saying about Gandhi.

He also looks at what Gandhi’s political rivals and adversaries were writing. In his book, he has a very interesting account of the Indian revolutionaries who disparaged nonviolence and thought armed struggle would be more effective and quicker in getting the British out. They saw nonviolence as weak, womanly and so on—a kind of macho attack on Gandhi’s nonviolence. He talks about Ambedkar, the great low caste revolutionary who disagreed with Gandhi. The book also has two very good set pieces: a fine account of the Salt March and as well as of Gandhi’s great fast of September 1947, which brought peace to Calcutta.

“Whether Gandhi or Marx or Hobbes or Mill, any great political thinker is living his or her life day to day and adapting and changing his or her views”

The other interesting thing about Dalton’s work—and this is very, very important—is that he looks at the evolution of Gandhi’s thought. Because a life is lived day to day. Whether Gandhi or Marx or Hobbes or Mill, any great political thinker is living his or her life day to day and adapting and changing his or her views. Those who don’t look at the evolution of a life, who don’t have a historical or chronological or developmental understanding of a life, are forced to cherry-pick. They want consistencies that don’t exist.

Dalton shows the evolution of Gandhi’s views. For example, he shows that Gandhi had very conservative views about caste and race, but how over time he shed his prejudices and arrived at a more capacious, universalistic understanding of humanity. It’s a good corrective to those ideologues who want to make a certain case and selectively quote Gandhi from that earlier period in his life.

So I think as an account of the development of Gandhi’s political philosophy and as an analysis of Gandhi’s Indian critics—who had serious, profound and sometimes telling political disagreements with Gandhi—Dalton’s book is particularly valuable.

He’s also drawing attention to the effectiveness of nonviolent protest. To quote from the book, “nonviolent power in action defined his career: the creative ways that he used it excite the world today.” There’s the issue of the continuing relevance of Gandhi’s methods.

Yes, and to elaborate on that point, the last chapter of Dalton’s book, before the conclusion, is called “Mohandas, Malcolm, and Martin.” It talks about Gandhi’s legacy in twentieth-century America and what Malcolm X did not take from Gandhi and what Martin Luther King did take from Gandhi. There’s an analysis of the ways in which you can trace the influence of Gandhi’s legacy on Martin Luther King and race relations in America. The book came out in the early 1990s, so it was a little early to assess Gandhi’s impact on Eastern Europe, but he did also have an impact there. The leaders of Solidarity, particularly thinkers like Adam Michnik, the great Polish writer, acknowledged their debt to Gandhi.

Dalton is telling you how particularly Gandhi’s technique of shaming the oppressor through nonviolent civil disobedience can still be relevant.

Do you think that nonviolence worked particularly well against the British? Gandhi knew the British Empire very well, as is very clear from reading your book: he only returned to India when he was already 45 years old. So he knew a lot about the way the British thought and the way the British Empire worked. Do you think his knowledge of who he was fighting against to get India free helped him realize that that technique would work—when maybe it wouldn’t under all circumstances?

I think you’re right on the first count, that nonviolence could work against the British whereas it may not have worked against a more brutal oppressor. There’s a nice story—possibly apocryphal, but worth telling nonetheless—of Ho Chi Minh coming to India in the 1950s and telling a gathering in New Delhi that if Mahatma Gandhi had been fighting the French, he would have given up nonviolence within a week.

Likewise, against either the Dutch (who were really brutal in Indonesia) or Hitler, it would be absurd to try it. In my book I have an account of Gandhi advocating nonviolence for resisting Hitler and the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber taking issue with him–and rightly so. So yes, the British were embarrassed in ways in which maybe a more insensitive or callous ruler might not have been.

It’s also the case that one powerful segment of British opinion, represented by the Labour party, was always for Indian independence. From about 1905–6, well before Gandhi returned to India, Keir Hardie committed the Labour party to independence. Then, as the Labour party grew in influence within Great Britain through the 1920s and 1930s, there was an influential constituency of politicians and intellectuals supporting the Indian freedom movement. There were writers like George Orwell , Kingsley Martin of the New Statesman , Fenner Brockway and Vera Brittain (the remarkable pacifist who was a friend of Gandhi’s) writing in the British press about the legitimacy of the Indian demand for independence. It’s not clear whether Ho Chi Minh had similar people lobbying for him in France. So it is true that nonviolence had a better chance against the British as compared to the Dutch in Indonesia or the French in Vietnam.

“There is a moral core to Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence. He is trying to shame the oppressor in preference to obliterating the oppressor out of existence.”

Having said all that, it wasn’t simply tactical. There is a moral core to Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence. He is trying to shame the oppressor in preference to obliterating the oppressor out of existence. Gandhi is saying, If I were to shoot the colonial official who is oppressing me, it means I am 100 per cent right and he is 100 per cent wrong. Otherwise how am I justified in taking his life?

Tying in with that, shall we talk about Gandhi’s religion next? This is a book called Gandhi’s Religion: A Homespun Shawl , written by a Belgian Jesuit, J T F Jordens. His point is that it’s impossible to understand Gandhi without his religion.

First, a small factual correction: the author, J T F Jordens, is more accurately described as a lapsed Belgian Jesuit. He started as a Jesuit, came to India, joined a church and then left the church. He got interested in Gandhi, became a scholar and ended up a professor in Australia.

This is partly accidental, but if you look at the three books by foreigners on my list, one is by an American who lived in Russia, which is Fischer. The second is by an American who studied in England, which is Dalton. The third is by a Belgian who ended up teaching in Australia. I wanted people with a non-parochial, non-xenophobic understanding of the world. They’re all very unusual people who provided very interesting perspectives on Gandhi and have written, in my view, three first-rate books.

Coming to Jordens and Gandhi’s Religion : Gandhi was a person of faith, but he had a highly idiosyncratic, individual, eccentric attitude to faith. He called himself a Sanatanist Hindu—which means a devout or orthodox Hindu—but didn’t go into temples. He did once enter a famous temple in south India, when they admitted Untouchables for the first time. Other than that, he was a Hindu who never entered temples. He was a Hindu, but he radically challenged some of the prejudices of the Hindu tradition, particularly the practice of untouchability. He was a Hindu whose closest friend was an English Christian priest, CF Andrews. He was a Hindu whose political program was that Hindus should not oppress Muslims and Muslims must have equal rights in an independent India.

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Gandhi’s views on religion are very distinct. You’re talking about a person who is growing up in the late 19th century, a time when there is a burst of rationalistic atheism, particularly following the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species . Hardy writes his poem God’s Funeral because intellectuals and scientists have turned their back on God.

But it’s also a time of aggressive proselytization, with Christian missionaries going to India, Muslim missionaries working in Africa and so on and so forth.

Now, too, we live in a time of intellectuals disparaging religion, with an arrogant atheism on one side and religious fundamentalism on the other. Gandhi gives us a way out of this false choice. Gandhi tells us that you can be religious, that there is a wonder and mystery to life which cold-blooded rationality and science can’t completely explain.

But, at the same time, there is no one true path to God. Gandhi says, Accept your fate. You’re born a Hindu, fine. Your parents, your grandparents were Hindus for many generations. But think about what you can learn from other faiths. Cultivate friendships with Christians and Muslims and Jews and Parsis. If you see your faith in the mirror of another, you may find out its imperfections. It’s a very interesting, heterodox approach to religion.

But religion was central to Gandhi’s life. I don’t talk about his in my biography, but when I was very young, in my early 20s, I went through a phase where I wanted to secularize Gandhi. I was brought up an atheist. My father and grandfather were scientists and I’d never went to temples. When I got interested in Gandhi, I thought, This religious business is all a distraction. What is really relevant about Gandhi, is equal rights for the low castes, equality for women, nonviolence, democracy and economic self-reliance. Let me try and have Gandhi without faith.

But ultimately I realized that was futile and wouldn’t give me a ready window into understanding Gandhi, because Gandhi was a person of faith. He’s someone to whom religion matters a great deal, but though he calls himself a Hindu he’s a rebel against orthodoxy. There’s a wonderful passage where a Christian disciple of his was thrown out by the church (Verrier Elvin, about whom I wrote a book many years ago). He writes to Gandhi saying that his bishop has excommunicated him. Gandhi writes back saying that it doesn’t matter, that his altar is the sky, and his pulpit the ground beneath him. You can still communicate with Jesus without being in a church. In this, Gandhi is influenced of course by Tolstoy and his writing, Tolstoy’s sense, as he puts it, that the kingdom of God is within you.

I think Jordens’s book is the most scrupulous, fair-minded and persuasive account of why faith is so central to Gandhi and what makes Gandhi’s faith so distinctive. That is why it is on my list.

And ultimately we should point out that Gandhi was killed by a Hindu for being too good to Muslims.

Absolutely.

And that focus of Gandhi’s on celibacy, does that come from religion?

Celibacy, or the struggle to conquer your sexual desires, is prevalent in several religious traditions: Catholicism, Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, and it’s totally absent in some other religious traditions: Islam, Protestant Christianity and Judaism. The idea that you must eschew sexual pleasures and that would bring you closer to God, is part of Buddhism and Catholicism and Hinduism, but it’s totally antithetical or alien to Islam, Judaism and the modern world.

Let me tell you a story. Some years ago an American scholar called Joseph Lelyveld wrote a book suggesting Gandhi was gay. Gandhi had a close Jewish friend called Hermann Kallenbach, with whom he lived in South Africa. Both were followers of Tolstoy and both wanted to be celibate. Lelyveld couldn’t understand two people living together wishing to be celibate so he concluded they were gay. His clinching piece of evidence was a letter that Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach when Gandhi was in London, temporarily separated from his friend and housemate. He wrote to Kallenbach saying, There is a bottle of Vaseline on my mantelpiece and it reminds me of you. The American scholar jumped to a very quick conclusion, but the bottle of Vaseline was actually there because both Gandhi and Kallenbach had taken a Tolstoyan vow not to wear shoes. They walked barefoot or in slippers and in London he was getting corns under his feet.

A modern man like Joseph Lelyveld, a 21st-century writer living in New York, attending the gay pride parades every year, can’t understand men wanting to be celibate voluntarily, rather than because it’s imposed on them. But this was not, as is the case in many countries around the world, an eight-year-old child being shipped off to a seminary and told to become a priest. Kallenbach was a successful architect, Gandhi was a successful lawyer. They were both inspired by Tolstoy, the successful novelist, to give up everything and live the simple life. I had a great deal of fun in my first volume, Gandhi Before India , writing a two-page footnote addressing Joseph Lelyveld’s misunderstanding.

But the point is that celibacy is there in Hinduism and also in Jainism, an allied religion to which Gandhi was pretty close, because as a native Gujarati he had many close Jain friends. Jain monks are absolutely committed to this kind of sexual abstinence. So it was a core part of his religious beliefs. It comes from his faith and it is something which modern men and women just can’t comprehend.

But despite Gandhi’s religious openmindedness, he wouldn’t let his son marry a Muslim.

That leads us nicely to your last book. Gandhi was a man who always put the political and the public before his private life. And, as you said earlier, the result is that he treated his family pretty badly. The last book on your list is a life of his son Harilal. It’s called Harilal Gandhi: A Life . Some quotes from his son that appear in the book: “No attention was paid to us” and  “You have spoken to us not in love, but always in anger.” It’s very sad, isn’t it? Tell me about his son and this book.

This was a book written in Gujarati by a scholar called Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal and translated into English by one of the preeminent Indian Gandhian scholars of the day, Tridip Suhrud, who was, for many years, the curator of Gandhi’s own personal archive in Ahmedabad. Suhrud has provided a very detailed introduction and notes, so it’s a very good edition of this biography.

To, again, put things in context, Gandhi married very young. He was married in his teens and he had his first child, Harilal, in 1888 when he was not even 20. Shortly after his Harilal is born, Gandhi goes to London to get a law degree. So he’s absent for the first two years of his son’s life. Then he comes back and spends a year and a bit in India and then goes off again, to South Africa, to make a living and leaves his wife and children behind. Then, after some years, his wife and children join him in South Africa. But then Harilal, the eldest son, is sent back to India, to matriculate. So for many of the formative years of Harilal growing up, his father is absent.

Also, because Gandhi has his son so early, by the time Harilal comes to maturity and is thinking about his own career and his own future, Gandhi is himself only in his thirties. Gandhi is having his midlife crisis. He is abandoning his career as a prosperous lawyer to become a full-time social activist. At the same time, Harilal is having his adolescent crisis.

Now, I don’t want to bring the biographer into it, but if I was to look at myself, like many people, I also had a midlife crisis. When I was 36 or 37 I gave up a university job and became a freelance writer. I said to hell with institutions and tutorials—I just want to be on my own. When that happened, my son was four years old, because I’d had him in my early 30s. In Gandhi’s case, unfortunately, his own midlife crisis and change of career coincided with his son’s adolescent crisis. And this, partly, was responsible for the clash. Gandhi is telling his son, Go to jail. Follow me, become a social worker, give up everything for the community like I have done. And the son is saying, Hey, but when you were my age you went to London to become a lawyer. Why can’t I go to London and become a lawyer too?

And Gandhi is profoundly unsympathetic to his son’s hopes, his desires. It’s also the case that the son has a love marriage, which Gandhi doesn’t really approve of. The son is devoted to his wife but the wife dies leaving him bereft of his emotional anchor.

Gandhi turns increasingly angry, judgmental and frustrated at his son not doing what he wants him to do. And Harilal is broken by this. At one level he resents his father’s overbearing, authoritarian manner and at another level he craves his father’s attention. So Harilal goes to jail several times in South Africa and several times in India too because he wants his father to know that he’s as much of a patriot as anybody else.

The son tries several times to matriculate, but fails. His wife dies. Then he tries several times to become a businessman, but all his business ventures fail. Then he becomes an alcoholic, then he becomes a lapsed alcoholic, then he goes back to the bottle again. Then, because he’s so angry with his father, he converts to Islam merely to spite Gandhi. This leads to a very anguished letter by his mother, Kasturba Gandhi. She’s very rarely in the public domain but is so angry at her son’s spiteful act, that she writes in the press saying, Why are you doing this just to shame your father?

So it’s a very tragic and complicated relationship and of course it’s not unusual. Many driven, successful people are not very good husbands or fathers. Modern history is replete with such examples. But in Gandhi’s case, because we have this book by Dalal, we can read all their letters. We can see the exchanges between father and son, the pervasive lack of comprehension and the progressive anger and exasperation at Gandhi’s end and the anger and resentment at the son’s end. It all comes out very vividly in this account.

Again, it’s a factual account. It’s written by a scholar who wants to tell you the truth in an unadorned, factual, dispassionate way. But I think it’s very effective for not being overwritten or overblown or excessively hyperbolic or judgmental.

And Harilal doesn’t go to Gandhi’s funeral right? He was so estranged from his father that he didn’t go?

He wanted to go to the funeral, actually. There’s one version that the news came too late, and that he went to Delhi. But it’s a very sad story. We talked earlier about the Attenborough movie. There is also a very nice film based on this book called Gandhi, My Fathe r. It’s a feature film, made in English, by the Indian director Feroz Abbas Khan. It started as a play. So it was a play and then a film on this very complicated, tormented relationship between the father of the nation and his own son. I would urge readers to watch the film because it’s very good.

One last question: you didn’t include Gandhi’s autobiography on this list of books. Is that because you wanted them to be books about him rather than by him or was there a more fundamental reason?

Gandhi’s autobiography is indispensable, but it’s so well known. It’s available in hundreds of editions, and in dozens of languages. Every major publisher has published it and you can get it anywhere. I wanted readers of Five Books to get some fresher, more vivid, less-known perspectives on Gandhi.

But certainly, they should read the autobiography too. It’s now available in a new annotated edition by the scholar I mentioned, Tridip Suhrud. It’s a first rate edition brought out by Yale University Press.

And the autobiography is very readable, is that right?

Yes, Gandhi was a master of English and Gujarati prose. He transformed Gujarati writing. He wrote beautiful, economical, clear prose with no affectation and no pomposity. He was a marvellous writer.

In the course of my research for my first volume about Gandhi, one of my most pleasurable discoveries was an obscure book published in the 1960s that had compiled Gandhi’s school marksheets. Someone found out that when Gandhi  matriculated from school, he got 44% in English and more or less the same in Gujarati. So I always use this example when I speak at colleges in India: here is a master of Gujarati and English who got a mere 44% in his examinations.

The autobiography was written in Gujarati but then translated by Gandhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai, who was quite a remarkable man himself. But since the autobiography is so well known and so easily and widely available, I thought I should recommend some other books.

September 3, 2019

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Ramachandra Guha

Ramachandra Guha is a historian based in Bengaluru. His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002), which was chosen by The Guardian as one of the ten best books on cricket ever written. India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007; revised edition, 2017) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist , the Washington Post , and the Wall Street Journal , and as a book of the decade in the the Times of London and The Hindu .

Ramachandra Guha’s most recent book is a two volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi. The first volume, Gandhi Before India (Knopf, 2014), was chosen as a notable book of the year by the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle . The second volume, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (Knopf, 2018), was chosen as a notable book of the year by the New York Times and The Economist .

Ramachandra Guha’s awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Daily Telegraph/Cricket Society prize, the Malcolm Adideshiah Award for excellence in social science research, the Ramnath Goenka Prize for excellence in journalism, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

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This selection of Khushwant Singh’s prose is like the man himself: blunt, perceptive, incorrigibly provocative, often amusing but always bubbling with life. The book includes candid portrayals of public personalities such as Zail Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, Nani Palkhivala, Rajni Patel and Nargis Dutt. There are also vivid portrayals of public personalities such as Zail Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, Nani Palkhivala, Rajni Patel and Nargis Dutt. There are also vivid portraits of places such as Delhi, Amritsar, Goa, Lucknow, Bhopal and Hyderabad. Then there are his musings on such issues as communalism, terrorism and bride burning, still as vivid today as when the pieces were first written.

The Afternoon Girl by Amrinder Bajaj

The Afternoon Girl celebrates a friendship that swings between love and loathing, adoration and indifference, support and abandonment, but stood the test of time and circumstances. With disarming honesty, the book builds and busts a few myths, and offers unexpected insights into Khushwant Singh: good- and sometimes ill-humored mentor, garrulous yet grumpy friend, and saintly but outspoken old man.

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Nov 5, 2023

10 modern Indian authors who are widely read across the world

Famous indian authors.

Indian authors have achieved international recognition for their diction, narrative and simplicity. They have captivated readers by providing them a hint into India’s culture and social dynamics or with a portrayal that isn't very common.

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is a celebrated British-Indian author, renowned for his famous as well as controversial literary works, such as ‘The Satanic Verses.’ The book ignited global discourse on free speech and its limits and almost cost him his life.

​Geetanjali Shree

Indian author, Geetanjali Shree won the International Booker Prize 2022, for her book ‘Ret Samadhi’, translated to English as ‘Tomb of Sand’ by Daisy Rockwell.

The-Booker-Prizes

Arundhati Roy

Famous Indian author and activist, Arundhati Roy is the first Indian woman to win the Booker Prize for her novel ‘The God of Small Things’. Apart from being an author she is also a minority and human rights activist.

​Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen is not just an author but also a renowned name in the Economic and developmental circles. He is celebrated across the world for his contributions to social welfare economics, development theory, and his emphasis on human development.

​Jhumpa Lahiri

Nilanjana Sudeshna, popularly known as Jhumpa Lahiri is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian American author. She explores themes of immigrant experiences and identity in her works. ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ and ‘The Namesake’ are her most famous books.

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​amish tripathi.

Famous mytho-fiction writer, Amish Tripathi rose to fame with his book ‘Immortals of the Meluha’ and the rest is history. His unique form of writing and presenting Indian mythology has garnered him a wide readership, both in India and abroad.

​Vikram Chandra

Vikram Chandra is an Indian-American author, celebrated for his literary works, notably ‘Sacred Games’ which was later adapted into a hit webseries. His debut novel, ‘Red Earth and Pouring Rain’, was awarded the 1996 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Vikram-Chandra-Biography

Shashi Tharoor

Popular Indian author and politician, Shashi Tharoor's writings cover a vast range, from political discourse to history. He can make any ordinary man buy a dictionary to understand his sentences. ‘The Great Indian Novel’ and ‘Why I am a Hindu’ are 2 of his most famous books.

Ramachandra Guha

Notable historian and author, Ramchandra Guha and his narratives are famous around the world. He has made significant contributions to the understanding of India's modern history . His famous book, ‘India After Gandhi’ is an exploration of India’s post-independence journey.

Ramachandra-Guha/X

Chetan Bhagat

Popular Indian author, Chetan Bhagat is known for his best-selling novels that are a mixture of romance and social issues. His notable books like ‘Revolution 2020’ and ‘2 States’ have garnered wide attention and some have even been converted to Bollywood movies.

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The Greatest Indian Books of All Time

Click to learn how this list is calculated.

This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 344 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page .

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1. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The novel tells the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born at the exact moment when India gained its independence. As a result, he shares a mystical connection with other children born at the same time, all of whom possess unique, magical abilities. As Saleem grows up, his life mirrors the political and cultural changes happening in his country, from the partition of India and Pakistan, to the Bangladesh War of Independence. The story is a blend of historical fiction and magical realism, exploring themes of identity, fate, and the power of storytelling.

2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This novel is a poignant tale of fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, who navigate through their childhood in Kerala, India, amidst a backdrop of political unrest and societal norms. The story, set in 1969, explores the complexities of their family's history and the tragic events that shape their lives. Their mother's transgression of caste and societal norms by having an affair with an untouchable leads to disastrous consequences, revealing the oppressive nature of the caste system and the destructive power of forbidden love. The novel also delves into themes of postcolonial identity, gender roles, and the lingering effects of trauma.

3. Mahabharata by Vyasa

The book is an English translation of the ancient Indian epic, originally written in Sanskrit, which tells the story of a great war that took place between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The narrative explores themes of duty, righteousness, and honor while also featuring a rich array of gods, goddesses, and supernatural beings. It is not only a tale of war and conflict, but also a profound philosophical and spiritual treatise, containing the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text of Hindu philosophy.

4. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

"A Fine Balance" is a poignant narrative set in India during the 1970s, a time of political turmoil and upheaval. The plot revolves around four diverse characters - a widow, a young student, and two tailors - who are brought together by fate. Through their interconnected lives, the book explores themes of caste, poverty, political corruption, and the human spirit's resilience. It offers a profound exploration of the delicate balance that sustains life amidst adversity.

5. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

Set in 1950s India, this epic novel follows the story of four families over a period of 18 months, focusing primarily on the young woman Lata and her mother's quest to find her a suitable husband. The narrative explores the political, social, and personal upheavals in a newly independent India, struggling with its own identity amidst the backdrop of a society grappling with religious tensions, land reforms, and the shaping of a modern democratic state. Lata's journey is an exploration of love, ambition, and the weight of familial duty.

6. Ramayana by Valmiki

The book is an ancient Indian epic poem which follows the journey of Prince Rama as he embarks on a quest to rescue his beloved wife Sita from the clutches of Ravana, the demon king. The narrative explores themes of morality, dharma (duty/righteousness), and the struggle between good and evil. The story is not just about Rama's battle against Ravana, but also his spiritual journey and the importance of upholding one's duties and responsibilities.

7. Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya

"Nectar in a Sieve" is a tale of an Indian peasant woman named Rukmani who endures the hardships of rural poverty, natural disasters, and personal tragedy, while trying to raise her children and maintain her marriage. The book explores themes of love, hope, and the strength of the human spirit against the backdrop of a rapidly changing India. Despite the constant struggles, Rukmani never loses her faith and hope, symbolizing the resilience and strength of ordinary people in the face of adversity.

8. Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand

"Untouchable" is a novel that explores a day in the life of a young Indian man, Bakha, who belongs to the lowest caste, the Untouchables. The narrative follows Bakha's experiences of extreme discrimination and humiliation as he performs his job as a latrine cleaner. Despite the harsh realities of his life, Bakha dreams of a better future and is fascinated by the modern world and British rule. The novel provides a poignant critique of the caste system and the social inequalities in India.

9. Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

This novel is a political and philosophical exploration set in early 20th century India during the country's struggle for independence. It revolves around three main characters: a nobleman, his wife, and his friend, a fervent nationalist. The story unfolds as the wife, initially confined to the inner quarters of their home, begins to question her societal boundaries and the idea of nationalism after meeting her husband's friend. The narrative delves into the complexities of love, freedom, and the concept of home and world, set against the backdrop of the Swadeshi movement, a part of the Indian independence movement against British rule.

10. All about H. Hatterr by G. V. Desani

This novel is a unique blend of Eastern philosophy and Western literary technique, following the adventures of its protagonist, a British-educated Indian everyman, as he navigates the complexities of life. The narrative is filled with humor, satire, and linguistic playfulness, as the protagonist interacts with various eccentric characters and experiences numerous absurd situations. The book is a critique of both British colonialism and traditional Indian society, offering a distinctive and insightful perspective on the human condition.

11. The Story Of My Experiments With Truth by Mahatma Gandhi

This book is an autobiography that details the personal journey of a prominent leader who played a key role in India's struggle for independence from British rule. It explores his philosophy of nonviolent resistance and truth, which he refers to as "Satyagraha," and traces his development from a young, unsure boy into a principled activist committed to social justice. The narrative delves into his experiments with diet, celibacy, and other personal challenges, reflecting his quest for self-improvement and moral integrity, which he believed were essential for political leadership and social reform.

12. Upanishads by Hindu scripture

The book is a comprehensive compilation of ancient Hindu scriptures known as the Upanishads, which are fundamental to understanding the core philosophies of Hinduism. The text delves into profound spiritual teachings and philosophical dialogues about the nature of reality, the self, and the universe, providing invaluable insights into concepts such as karma, reincarnation, moksha, and the ultimate truth of existence. It serves as a guide to spiritual enlightenment and self-realization, offering timeless wisdom for introspection and personal growth.

13. The Recognition of Sakuntala by Kālidāsa

"The Recognition of Sakuntala" is an ancient Indian play that tells the story of a beautiful woman named Sakuntala who lives in a hermitage and falls in love with King Dushyant. After a series of misunderstandings and a curse that causes the king to forget Sakuntala, the two are eventually reunited when a fisherman finds the royal signet ring that Dushyant gave Sakuntala, leading to her recognition. The play is a classic example of the Indian dramatic tradition, with its mix of romance, comedy, and elements of the supernatural.

14. The Guide by R. K. Narayan

"The Guide" follows the life of Raju, a corrupt tour guide who, through a series of events, ends up in prison, and later becomes a spiritual guide. After his release from prison, Raju is mistaken for a holy man by villagers and gets involved in resolving a drought problem by fasting. The novel explores themes of life, death, and redemption, as well as the complex nature of human relationships and the power of belief.

15. Satyagraha in South Africa by Gandhi

This book is a personal account of the author's experiences during the Indian struggle for civil rights in South Africa. It details the development and implementation of the concept of Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, as a means of combating social injustice. The book provides a unique insight into the author's philosophies and strategies of peaceful protest, including his belief in the power of truth and the necessity of self-sacrifice in the fight against oppression.

16. Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai

"Clear Light of Day" is a novel set in Old Delhi, which explores the dynamics of the Das family. The story shifts back and forth in time, reflecting on the lives of siblings Bim, Raja, Baba, and Tara, and their relationships with each other and their aunts. The narrative delves into themes of memory, time, and decay, as well as the political upheaval of the Partition of India. The novel is a poignant study of family relationships, personal change, and loss.

17. River of Fire by Qurratulain Hyder

"River of Fire" is an expansive novel that spans over 2,500 years of Indian history. The narrative unfolds through the intertwined lives of four characters who are reincarnated in different eras: a Buddhist monk in 400 B.C., a court poet in the Mughal Empire, a British colonial administrator, and a modern Indian intellectual. This literary masterpiece is a reflection on the cyclical nature of history, the continuity of life and the human spirit, and the eternal quest for freedom and identity, providing a panoramic view of the socio-political evolution of the Indian subcontinent.

18. Family Life by Akhil Sharma

Family Life is a poignant, semi-autobiographical novel that follows the experiences of an Indian family that immigrates to America in the late 1970s. Their dream of a better life is shattered when the older son suffers a terrible accident that leaves him brain-damaged. The story is narrated by the younger son, who struggles with the pressures of his parents' expectations, the trauma of his brother's condition, and the cultural dislocation of being an immigrant in America. The novel explores themes of family, love, loss, and the immigrant experience.

19. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

"The White Tiger" is a darkly humorous novel set in modern-day India that explores the country's class struggle through the eyes of an ambitious and cunning protagonist. Born in a poor village, he moves to Delhi to work as a chauffeur for a rich family. He eventually breaks free from his life of servitude by committing an act of shocking violence, and uses his newfound freedom to become a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore. The story, told through a series of letters written to the Chinese Premier, is a scathing critique of India's social and economic disparities, and the corruption that permeates all levels of society.

20. The Skeleton by Amrita Pritam

"The Skeleton" is a poignant tale of a woman named Chandi who, in her pursuit of love, ends up becoming a prostitute. The narrative explores her struggle to maintain her dignity and self-respect in a society that looks down upon her profession. The book delves into themes of love, betrayal, and societal norms, offering a powerful commentary on the hypocrisy and double standards of society.

21. The Tootinameh; Or, Tales of a Parrot by India , Iran

"The Tootinameh; Or, Tales of a Parrot" is a collection of traditional stories from India and Iran, told from the perspective of a parrot. The parrot tells tales to a young woman to keep her from straying while her husband is away, weaving narratives of love, honor, and morality. The book is a rich tapestry of cultural and historical insights, showcasing the storytelling traditions of India and Iran.

22. The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh

"The Shadow Lines" is a novel that explores themes of memory, family, and national identity through the eyes of a young boy and his experiences growing up in Calcutta, India. The narrative is framed by two major historical events: the 1964 Dhaka Riots and the 1942 World War II. The protagonist's relationships with his family and his personal experiences are juxtaposed with these events, highlighting the complexities of identity, memory, and the lasting impacts of historical events on individual lives. The novel also delves into the arbitrary nature of national borders and the shadow lines they draw between people and their histories.

23. The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor

This book is a satirical take on Indian politics and history, cleverly intertwined with characters and events from the epic Mahabharata. The narrative presents a parallel between the two, with the characters in the novel mirroring significant figures from India's political scene during the Independence and post-Independence era. The book is a humorous yet thought-provoking critique of Indian society and politics, offering a unique blend of myth, history, and satire.

24. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

This novel explores themes of love, loss, and the human struggle for identity amidst political unrest. Set in India during the Nepalese movement for an independent state, the narrative follows the lives of a retired judge living in the Himalayas, his granddaughter, and his cook. As the political situation worsens, each character must grapple with their own personal issues, including the judge's regret over his failed marriage and his granddaughter's struggle to find her place in the world. The cook, meanwhile, dreams of a better life for his son in the United States. The narrative weaves together these individual stories to create a poignant tapestry of human resilience in the face of adversity.

25. Swami and Friends by R. K. Narayan

Set in the fictional town of Malgudi in South India, the book follows the story of a ten-year-old boy named Swami and his adventures with his friends. The narrative encapsulates the trials and tribulations of school life, family relationships, and friendships in a traditional Indian context. The book is a charming exploration of a child's life in a small town, filled with humor and poignant moments.

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10 biographies of popular Bollywood celebs that'll give you a peek into their lives

Britney Spears made headlines recently by sharing the news of her tell-all memoir, which will highlight the pop star’s conservatorship experience, among other topics. Celebrity memoirs can get really drab, especially if much of their lives are talked about in the media. But the one thing that is interesting about this genre is that it draws the celebrity down to a human level where they are honest, scared, vulnerable and even funny at times.

Filled with humour, insights, and scandals, if you’re looking for something to read which is as spicy as a Bollywood movie, then pick these memoirs. Written by some of the biggest names in Bollywood, these books give a sneak peek into the lives of actors we have grown up, idolised and loved on-screen.

Actor Soha Ali Khan unpacks what it's like coming from a family of famous people, whether it’s having Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi as her father, Sharmila Tagore as her mother, or Kareena Kapoor Khan as her sister-in-law. She recounts her life in a series of essays that have her experiences from being the child of famous parents to being an actor and a celebrity in the age of social media.

Actress Neena Gupta is known as one of the fiercest women in Bollywood and her extraordinary journey chronicles that in this book. She talks about growing up in Delhi, moving to Mumbai in the 80s to pursue acting, struggling to find work, battling stereotypes as a single mother, and the success and recognition that she’s now receiving.

If you’re looking for honest opinions on pregnancy, postpartum gloom, and other aspects of motherhood, then make sure to give this book a read. The actress opens up about the physical discomforts that the body goes through, the emotional rollercoaster and the psychological changes that women have to cope with during the time of pregnancy. A must-read for new mothers.

Priyanka Chopra traces her roots before her global domination. In a collection of personal essays, stories, and observations, the actress walks us through some of the most important moments of her life, from winning a beauty pageant to losing her father to cancer and marrying one of the Jonas brothers.

The Covid-19 pandemic was hard for many, especially the migrant workers who were unable to go to their hometowns or get jobs. In such times of helplessness and hardships, actor Sonu Sood helped thousands of stranded migrant workers to return home, gaining the title of the ‘Messiah of migrants’ among them. In this book, the actor talks about his journey from Moga to Mumbai, his struggles in Bollywood, and how he transitioned from being an on-screen villain to a real-life hero in a time of need.

Rising above the shadows of his legendary father Raj Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor left a mark in the Hindi film industry right from his debut film Mera Naam Joker , in 1970. In this candid memoir, Kapoor gives his fans a peek into the fascinating life he had lived as an actor, whether it was meeting Dawood Ibrahim, his on-screen and off-screen romances, his tryst with clinical depression, and more. You’ll also find a warm foreword written by his wife Neetu Singh and an afterword penned by his son Ranbir Kapoor .

Naseeruddin Shah’s career has been an extraordinary one in the film industry. In this memoir, Shah charts down his life, from his schooling days to working with actors and directors like Ebrahim Alkazi, Shyam Benegal, Girish Karnad, Om Puri, and Shabana Azmi. He goes into detail about his struggles to earn a living as an actor, his marriages, and his successes and failures.

Whether you love him or hate him, you can’t deny his popularity. From making one of the most cult classic rom-coms in Bollywood ( Kuch Kuch Hota Hai ) to setting up his own production house, discovering new talent, and his fashion choices, KJo , as he is popularly known, has been breaking norms and challenging the conventional for many years now. In this memoir, he sheds the layers to show his vulnerability by talking about his sexual orientation, his relationship with Shah Rukh Khan, and how his friendship with Kajol ended.

Ayushmann Khurrana has played many believable characters on-screen that go through the same struggles that a lot of normal people would be going through in real life. His portrayal of real characters is what makes him popular. But before he became this big movie star, Khurrana was a reality TV star and a distinct voice on the radio. In this book, he recounts the trials and tribulations that aspiring actors had to go through in Bollywood.

You may not be able to find this one anywhere anymore as this is a controversial one, enough to land Nawazuddin Siddiqui himself into trouble. Published in 2017, the actor's memoir ruffled some feathers when he made revelations about his affairs with Niharika Singh, Sunita Rajwar, and other intimate details of his personal life, which led to him withdrawing his book only a week after its release.

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Buy Books on Biographies and Autobiographies Online at Amazon India

With instructive and rousing stories about real people and true stories, you will be able to gain inspiration and knowledge. Amazon India is here with a list of inspiring biographies and autobiographies. By reading actual accounts of popular people and how they dealt with triumph and disaster, you will be able to get a firsthand experience. Pick from a wide collection of books by popular authors like Michelle Obama, Sean Patrick, Sudha Murthy, Arun Tiwary, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and many more at Amazon.in.

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Giving you books by authors and experts like Michelle Obama, Sean Patrick, Sudha Murthy, Arun Tiwary, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and many more, you can be assured of getting the most accepted matter for your knowledge and reference. Shop and enjoy great deals on this range of books on biographies and autobiographies at Amazon.in.

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Biographies and autobiographies are always fascinating for readers who particularly love to read about the life of great personalities, their relationships, their education and work as well as other interesting events. Biographies are generally written by other people on a particular person, whereas autobiographies are written by people who want to give an account of their own life. To take a look at such inspirational books of renowned personalities, login to Amazon.in and browse through the long list of biographies and autobiographies available at great prices.

When you plan to read more about personalities, you must be sure what kind of book you are looking for or which particular personality you want to read about. Browsing through the long list of biographies and autobiographies can be confusing if you are not certain about what you are looking for. Once you finalise, your search to your requirements will be easy and fast. Read your favourite biographies and autobiographies in different regional languages like Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and more.

If you enjoy reading biographies and autobiographies with much delight, then Amazon.in is the right place for you. Read interesting accounts on life of renowned people like A.P.J Abdul Kalam in books like My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions and Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of Abdul Kalam , the biography on Alexander as Alexander the Great: The Macedonian who Conquered the World by Sean Patrick, Warren Buffet: The Life and Business Lessons of Warren Buffet by George Ilian and more. Choose from the wide range of biographies and autobiographies online at Amazon.in and enjoy reading them in hardcover, softcover, your favourite Kindle version, audiobook, bundle and more.

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Top 50 Famous Indian Authors and Their Best-Selling Books

Updated/Edited on 28th June, 2024:   This is one of the most-read blogs on my website. Thank you so much for showing so much love to this post. I feel grateful (Joining Hands Indian Style). I am an independent verified SEO writer , best-selling author, reliable ghostwriter and personal branding expert who helps entrepreneurs and startups nurture their online/digital presence. Guaranteed results in SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Lead Generator via LinkedIn . See my portfolio here and follow me on socials: www.linktr.ee/sarkhedibhavik Thank you. Because of your love to my reading, I have been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffingtonpost and my work got a humble place in The Quint, Times of India, DNA. Keep reading informational blogs. Keep sharing. Reach out to me for any feedbacks and suggestions on content writing, personal branding and digital marketing 🙂 🙂 I am all ears. Also, I do 1:1 consultation if you are interested

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When you think Indian book writing and reading culture, you step into a world rich with literature that spans generations, reflecting the diversity and complexity of the Indian subcontinent.

From the vibrant colors of its landscapes to the intricate threads of its cultural tapestry, Indian literature offers a unique perspective on the human experience.

Exploring Indian authors reveals a diverse array of voices, each with its own unique perspective and storytelling tradition. From the timeless wisdom of Salman Rushdie to the contemporary narratives of Arundhati Roy, Indian authors have enchanted readers worldwide with their ability to weave complex plots, evoke powerful emotions, and provoke profound questions.

Indian literature, encompassing a wide range of genres and themes, offers something for every reader. Whether it’s the epic mythology of Devdutt Pattanaik or the stark realism of Mulk Raj Anand, Indian books traverse borders and cultures, inviting readers into worlds both familiar and unfamiliar.

In India, reading is not merely a pastime but a cherished tradition that is deeply ingrained in society.

From bustling street markets to quiet bookstores, the love for storytelling permeates every corner of Indian life, fostering empathy, understanding, and connection among readers.

Indian writing is more than just words on a page; it is a celebration of the human spirit, an ode to the power of imagination, and a testament to the enduring legacy of storytelling. Why should everyone in the world read Indian books?

Because they offer a window into a world that is as diverse as it is enchanting, as profound as it is illuminating, and as timeless as it is relevant.

As an avid reader and enthusiast of Indian literature, I’d like to share my personal recommendations from the illustrious list of 50 authors and their remarkable works.

While each author brings a unique flavor to the literary landscape, there are certain voices that have resonated with me on a profound level.

These selections are purely subjective, reflecting my own tastes and preferences as a reader. I encourage fellow enthusiasts to explore these authors and their captivating narratives, allowing themselves to be immersed in the rich tapestry of Indian storytelling.

Therefore, out of these 50 celebrated authors, I urge fellow readers to explore the captivating narratives crafted by these 10 exceptional writers:

The Immortals of Meluha

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List of Famous Indian Personalities with their Autobiographies

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Indian History Congress

Jinimon Parekunnel

Autobiography is primarily about an individual in time. Time and space are the two important factors, which influence history. The significance of time and socio-political space are the subject matter of autobiographies as well as history.

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

Kris Manjapra

Jose Abraham

Abhas Mitra

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

Shodh Sari- An International Multidisciplinary Journal

L Gopalakrishnan

This is a collection of Gandhi anecdotes providing insight into different aspects of his personality. I am not the author.

AARF Publications Journals

Nirad C. Chaudhuri has always been accused by the critics for being defensive for the ways of the Britishers that they used during the British rule in India. This accusation has damaged his reputation as a literary writer in India. However, some other critics see the things from a wider perspective, and therefore, do not hesitate in releasing Chaudhuri from this accusation. These critics give their view that Chaudhuri's criticism of Indian social life emerges from his predilection for Western social life. Thus, in his autobiography, the author describes his personal experiences in detail which shaped his personality in a particular manner. It is an acknowledged fact that the personality of an individual depends on one’s heredity and environment. Both the factors significantly affect one’s attitude, intellectual set-up, and physique. The personality of an individual is likely to grow when he interacts with his environment. This personal interaction is what makes all his experiences unique. In his autobiography, he aptly portrays the picture of contemporary society. However, he narrates his life story of personal events, but his point-of-view is very objective as these events explicitly depict the actual image of contemporary society. Therefore, the present research paper attempts to deal with the depiction of contemporary society in Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.

Literatura Em Debate

Kailash Baral

RADHAKRISHNA MURTY TATAVARTY

Devender Kumar

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